Under the Ring interview with Austin Aries, discussing everything including Bound for Glory

I recently had the chance to have a conversation with “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived,” Austin Aries of TNA’s Impact Wrestling. TNA presents its annual Bound for Glory pay-per-view event at 8 p.m. on Sunday at Viejas Arena on the campus of San Diego State University in California.

Phil Strum: Tell me about your beginnings in the wrestling business. I believe you grew up in the Midwest. Were you always a fan and who were you watching?

Austin Aries: I grew up in Milwaukee. I remember seeing it and back then the AWA was on a lot in my area. It captured my imagination. I remember seeing “Rock ‘N’ Roll” Buck Zumhofe with his jumpsuit and his boom box. You had Sgt. Slaughter and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan. I kind of gravitated toward it. I also grew up watching a lot of Crockett stuff with the Four Horsemen and Barry Windham and Sting. That kind of wrestling. It grabbed me. I did watch WWE as a kid, but it seemed cartooney to me. I liked the rasslin’. It had a gritty type of feel and a whole different feel to it. As a kid, there wasn’t just one show in town I was growing up on. I watched World Class Championship Wrestling in the afternoon on ESPN. I watched all sorts of different wrestling.

PS: Tell me about your breaking into wrestling. What was it like and how quickly did you pick it up?

AA: One of my trainers was Eddie Sharkey. He sat in a chair, collected your money and told stories like you hear on all the shoot interviews. You know the name. He broke in Rick Rude and Jesse Ventura and Barry Darsow and a bunch of other guys. All those guys went through there at one time or another. At that point, Eddie was not too active at actually getting in the ring, but the guy had seen so much and had an old-school approach to wrestling.

I waited probably longer than I could have to have my first match. Some guys get thrown out there after a few weeks. With the background I had watching it, I knew some things I didn’t really know that I already knew. I caught on really quick, but I held off maybe six months. I trained three days a week for five hours and after six months, I felt ready. I wanted to make people take notice and feel confident when I walked in there.

PS: When did you realize you were getting good at it?

AA: It was hard to gauge at first because you don’t know what you’re comparing yourself to. The first day I walked in that garage, there was a ring sitting in front of me and I was in awe. It was 2000. The internet hadn’t really exploded yet and we hadn’t really had the technology age. Going to wrestling school wasn’t accepted where it is now and you can just Google it and find a school. I saw a couple of guys messing around and I thought to myself, man I know I could do better than that.

Terry Fox was my other trainer who was working with Eddie Sharkey. I begged him to get in the ring. He said, you’ve got to sign a waiver. Tuition was $3,000. They saw that I wanted it and we worked out a deal. As I progressed, with my athletic background, my passion and my knowledge for wrestling, it was something I was able to take to pretty quickly.

In 2004, I had been working for four years and working the circuits in the Midwest and getting booked in Milwaukee and in IWA-Mid South. It was natural progression and networking. Around the same time, I was in the Super 8 Tournament, which was a big event nationally for a lot of guys. I wrestled Christopher Daniels in the finals there and then got contacted by Ring of Honor that they were interested in using me.

Austin Aries. Photo courtesy TNA Impact Wrestling/Lee South

PS: You’ve worked a lot of places, but you’re in TNA right now. There’s always a lot of speculation about TNA’s business. Why is it good for Austin Aries to be in TNA right now?

AA: It’s just, obviously, a combination the second time around of timing and opportunity. For me, the nice thing is I think I have a good amount of creative input into my character. That’s important to me. We get into this business, most of us, because we don’t want to answer to the man. I like a little more of a creative outlet. It provides a nice balance of being on the road and also being at home, while helping the company.

I’m a guy who likes to maybe push the envelope a bit and maybe more than a bit and see if anybody notices. Our industry is so unique in that you’re like a live-action sports hero. You can go out there and try things and learn how to manipulate crowd emotions. I like controversy and to stir things up a bit and step on toes.

PS: I know Daniels has an acting background. Is that something you’re interested in and do you have any other background in performing.

AA: I was in choir in school, so I am comfortable singing in front of large groups of people. As I got older, I sang in a cover band. I had a knee injury a year into my training and I went back down and was singing in my band to make more money. The industries are similar. You hit the road and get your name out there. Wrestling was where my passion was, so I put singing on the backburner. Other than wrestling, where I put my creative outlets and energies into is music and cooking.

PS: What kind of band was it and what did you cover?

AA: It was an alternative rock band. We were called Zeno’s Revenge. We’d do whatever was popular. Godsmack, Staind, Metallica and maybe some heavier rock. Nickelback. We performed around the area when I was at (Winona State University, Minnesota). We worked that whole circuit. It was fun. It really all started because I worked with the drummer when I was bartending at the American Legion. I knew him before and he knew I always sang karaoke and I’d pull out some Creed or Hootie and the Blowfish. He said, ‘hey, you should sing in a cover band with us.’

PS: You’ve been a vegan for a while and you’re someone who came up years ago when I interviewed Daniel Bryan about other vegans in wrestling. He recently stopped following a vegan diet because he had difficulty eating on the road. How do you keep it up?

AA: One thing is that Bryan became a vegan because of medical reasons and not because of personal reasons. For me, it’s a decision I made. It can be difficult to eat on the road because there’s such a naivete to every diet that doesn’t include animal products. That’s what makes it difficult. You go to a restaurant and dairy products wouldn’t be something that anybody thinks about. You go to a pizzeria and you ask the person, ‘do they butter the crust before it comes out?’ ‘Oh, um, I’m not really sure.’ ‘Well, OK sweetheart, could you check with someone to find out?’ I’ve taken to telling people that I’m allergic to animal products. I’m a vegan by lifestyle choice. I think I am allergic to animal products. I might not break out in a rash the minute I eat it. People don’t put any more thought into food other than does it taste good and how much is it?

I was at my friend’s parents’ house. They have a nice house, nice cars, nice clothes. I looked in the fridge and it was all a bunch of junk. The mom says, “Oh , it’s so expensive to eat good.” To me, what we put in our bodies should be a little higher on the priority list. We shouldn’t be cutting the corners for the quickest, cheapest stuff and have it taste the best. I like to have nice food and I’ll spend a little extra. It’s a matter of being prepared and always having some kind of pumpkin seeds or a package of lentils. As long as I have those type of things, I’m fine.

TNA’s been really good with my dietary restrictions. They always have a vegan dish at catering. Two TVs ago, I kept hearing that they had this awesome vegan stuff in catering. It was vegan sausage and another vegan dish. I got there and it was completely gone, so apparently all the other wrestlers thought it was delicious too. I was like, ‘hey, that’s my food!’

Austin Aries. Photo courtesy TNA Impact Wrestling/Lee South

PS: Your match at Bound for Glory is the Ultimate X match between yourself, Manik, Chris Sabin and Jeff Hardy. What can fans expect?

AA: You can expect the unexpected. I know it’s a cliché, but the Ultimate X is a unique match to TNA Impact Wrestling. You have ring ropes and an X above the ring and the object is to pull the X down. I’m not a fan of the match and I’m not a fan of ladder matches. Eddie Sharkey never taught me that stuff and brought a ladder in the ring and explained the psychology of the ladder match or the Ultimate X match. It takes me out of my comfort zone and I always like those challenges. I prefer one-on-one in a wrestling ring for 30 or 60 minutes, but whatever kind of hoops I need to jump through or trusses I need to climb is fine. Whatever I need to do to put on a performance.

Jeff Hardy’s made a career out these type of matches. He’s taken all sorts of daredevil types of falls and keeps getting up to tell about it. Manik’s been around and he wants to prove himself against the biggest names in the company. Chris Sabin’s got the post heavyweight championship blues, which I can relate to. He’s done a 180 in attitude since losing the bet. To make a long story short, there’s a lot of moving parts and it adds to the excitement.

PS: The X Division’s always been a signature part of TNA. It seems to me that having the top two spots in the biggest company in North America, WWE, going to Daniel Bryan and CM Punk, and having them both succeed is good for smaller talents in wrestling. Do there need to be more opportunities for smaller cruiserweight guys or does that not really matter in wrestling anymore?

AA: That doesn’t really matter to me. I’ve never viewed myself a cruiserweight guy. If there are actual weight classes in wrestling, I don’t see where they are. From my first day in Eddie Sharkey’s camp, I knew I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a cruiserweight. You could be any shape and any size. It was important for me to be wel-rounded.

In an industry based on size, it’s awesome that TNA wrestling lets cream rise to the top. There are a lot of guys that are 6-feet-tall or less and 200 pounds or less, who are cut from the same cloth. You don’t get that everywhere else. They will support you if you’ve got the goods. I was never promised anything other than one paycheck. One match. One opportunity. They gave me another opportunity and I excelled at that. Not to say that it doesn’t cross anyone’s minds. I love the opportunity that’s been presented to me in TNA. Is the X Division a cruiserweight championship? It doesn’t seem to have a definition. It can come and go in relevance. For some people, how important is it? Is it a secondary title? Is it weight restrictions or is it not? What’s the best use for it? It’s something the company was built on. The X Division is unique to TNA and it’s important for us to accentuate it.

I talked to Jimmy Jacobs the other day who I know from Ring of Honor and is one of my best friends. He’s one of the better performers and he’s smaller than me and people consider me small. But I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s X Division-style. He’s anything but that. He’s Kevin Sullivan. You don’t judge people on size. This is entertainment and I’ll leave it at that.

People have to understand you have to be able to work that style and the great talents can do it. Samoa Joe has not been under the weight limit since he was in first grade, but you have to understand that the upper echelon elite performers have range. A lot more of the guys in that category go both ways. Some guys can only work that type of style, the cruiserweight X Division style and that’s fine. That’s their role. Some guys can do it all and those are the upper echelon guys.

PS: What’s the future hold for Austin Aries?

AA: I want to stay healthy and I want to stay happily employed. I want to keep on this train. It’s taken me on different turns and I trust the path it’s taken me to go to the right spot. I want to continue to branch out. I have a passion for information getting out there to people. I shake kids’ hands and they are obese and already on their way to diabetes and heart disease. I want to use my platform on a daily basis because parents aren’t informed and haven’t been informed for a few generations, that it’s like child abuse if you abuse food for years and it’s much longer lasting. To me, that’s a passion and I want to start focusing on that, what people put in their bodies.